tion parameters. A Test for the Poisson Distribution Consider a test to determine af data are generated by the Poisson distribution. One pro- cedure for attempting to resolve questions of disputed authorship is to count the num- ber of occurrences of particular words in blocks of text. These can be compared with results from passages whose authorship is known; often this comparison can be achieved through the assumption that the number of occurrences follows a Poisson distribution An example of this type of research involves the study of the Federalis Papers (Mesteller and Wallace 1964) 14.2 Code of Pets PopulationI'rameters own 589 u25 Example 14.4 Federalist Papers (Chi-Square) For a sample of 262 blodes of text (each approximately 200 words in length) from The Fed list papers (Mosteller and Wallace 1968), the mean number of occurrences of the word may was 0.66. Table 14.7 shows the observed frequencies of occurrence of this word in the 262 sampled blocks of test. Test the mall hypothesis that the population distribution of de currences is Poisson without assuming prior knowledge of the mean of this distribution Table 14.7 Oecurrences of the Word mayin 252 Blocks of Ted in The Federalist Papers NUMBER OF OCCURRENCES 1 2 30 MORE Observed frequency 156 14